FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 23 



deposits and the line of coast would tend to be rapidly obli- 

 terated in a country where the rainfall is so heavy as it is 

 along the western face of the Sahyadri range. Such a scarp, 

 as that of the Sahyadri, might probably be formed by fresh 

 water denudation alone, for somewhat similar cliffs may be 

 traced north of the Nerbudda, along the edge of the Malvau 

 plateau, and there is no reason to suppose that marine denu- 

 dation has aided in their formation. The chief peculiarity, 

 indeed, in favour of a marine origin in the case of the Sahya- 

 dri scarp is its approximate parallelism throughout so great 

 a distance with the present coast line. 



" There is, however, one curious circumstance which tends 

 strongly to suggest that the cliffs of the Konkan are of marine 

 origin. Upon all the precipices of the Sahyadri, and on the 

 steep sides of Matheran, and probably on other plateaux, a 

 kind of mollusc is found so closely resembling in shell, 

 animal, and habits one of the Littorince, or periwinkles of the 

 Indian coast, that it is difficult to believe that the two forms 

 have not the same origin. The Sahyadri shell (CremnoeoncJius 

 sdhgddrensis) differs, in fact, from such forms as Littorina 

 malaccana, chiefly in having a greenish epidermis like other 

 fresh-water mollusca. The Littorina lives on the face of the 

 rocks above high water mark, where the spray of the sea only 

 reaches it occasionally, and it frequently remains dry and 

 torpid for weeks, perhaps for months at a time. Cremno- 

 eoncJius similarly remains attached to the dry rock for more 

 than half the year, and is only recalled to active life in the 

 rainy season, when water trickles down the cliffs. It is 

 far from improbable that the Cremnoconehus is the altered 

 descendant of a Littorina which inhabited the cliffs of the 

 Western Ghats when they were washed by the sea. Besides 

 Crpmnoconcfats, two other species of the same genus exist, all 

 like the type, confined, so far as 'is known, to the cliffs of the 

 Sahyadri range and its immediate neighbourhood. 



"Whichever view be adopted, whether the denudation of the 

 Konkan be ascribed to rain and streams, or to the action of the 

 sea, supplemented by subaerial (fresh water) agencies, it 

 is clear that all this low ground has been carved out 

 from the original Deccan plateau, which must, originally, 

 have extended westward to the neighbourhood of the present 

 coast. A thickness of at least 4,000 feet of rock, and pro- 

 bably considerably more, has been removed by one agency 

 or another from the surface of the Konkan Valleys/' 



Mr. Blanford, it will be seen, does not commit himself to 

 either view. It may not be uninteresting to note hero the 

 popular Hindu tradition as to the origin of the Konkan. 



